State leaders are working on how to raise the commonwealth’s standardized test scores in the future.
One area where Kentucky students struggled was mathematics. The results showed that only 20 percent of schools in Kentucky had more than half of their students testing at the highest level in math.
Jonathan Thomas is the chair of the STEM Education Department at the University of Kentucky. He says many people struggle with something called “math anxiety.” In an interview with Eastern Standard, he said there are clues that students could have problems.
“I think the thing we’re looking for looking for fundamentally is, students or children or people that are close to us, when they start to just check out of a mathematical space, that might be a precursor to something deeper that is going on.”
Thomas said some of the signs to look out for are, behavioral changes or different body positioning or withdrawing, or the student just not being willing to engage anymore. He said parents should check in with teachers if they are concerned about their child.
“I may see things at home that my teachers aren’t seeing and things might be going swimmingly in math class. Something happens when they lose that support of a math class or their peers or something along those lines that that prompts some struggle that does occur or vise versa. So, trying to get a 360 view of what’s going on.”
There is more with Dr. Jonathan Thomas coming up later this week on Eastern Standard on WEKU.
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